An elastic shell model for the human pulmonary valve

The human pulmonary valve, a crucial part of the human heart, is located between the right ventricle and the pulmonary artery. Owing to its complex construction, accurate simulations of this valve with a mathematical model are rare. In this paper, according to the structural and physiological characteristics of the pulmonary valve, we use Koiter’s linear shell model to simulate the pulmonary valve under static conditions. Concretely, for discrete space variables, we use the conforming finite element method; that is, we use a linear element to discretize the two tangent components of the displacement, but the normal component of the displacement is discretized by using the Hsieh–Clough–Tocher triangle element. Finally, we conduct numerical experiments for the human pulmonary valve and analyzed the results. The numerical experimental results show that the proposed mathematical model is capable of describing the human pulmonary valve subjected to applied force well.